ABSTRACT
At the dawn of the Green Revolution, at the beginning of the 1960s, the average crop yield in the world was about 1.4 tonnes/hectare. Thirty years later, in the mid-1990s, it had increased to about 2.8 tonnes/hectare, i.e. a doubling of yields. In the mid 1960s, total global cereal production was about 0.94 billion tonnes. In 1995, it was in the order of 1.7 billion tonnes. The 2 billion ton mark was passed with a margin in 2004, when total cereal production was estimated at 2,254.9 million tonnes (FAO; Food Outlook, June 2, 2005).
